Wednesday, August 24, 2016

It was a cheap chicken pot pie. The frozen kind, that your mom makes you eat when you're growing up.

I was a college student, living in a small condo near BSU with 3 other guys, in the mid-1980's

The place was old, and (like most college-based condos) not in the best repair.

One night, I made the fateful decision to have a chicken pot pie for dinner (this is college, man, you eat what you can afford).

I put it in the oven (a real oven, we didn't have a microwave), turned it on, set the timer, and went back to my room to read. As I left the kitchen I heard a loud mechanical "clunk," though didn't think anything of it at the time. The dump was full of weird noises.

When I wandered back 30 minutes later, I discovered the oven had somehow activated its self-cleaning mode - meaning it locks the oven door and heats itself up to something on the Kelvin scale to incinerate anything inside. Including my dinner.

The whole condo at this point began smelling like a chicken pot pie. I turned off the oven, only to discover that it had broken. Even with the cleaning cycle stopped. The door was locked and couldn't be opened.

I walked over to McD's that night for dinner.

The chicken pie was now a fixture of the condo. There was no way to get the oven door open without tearing it apart. The landlord didn't really care about fixing it since the place was falling apart, and the 3 of us didn't have the money to fix it ourselves. So we left it there.

As the semester progressed the kitchen would occasionally develop a weird smell from the culture medium residing in the oven. When this happened (every few weeks) we'd turn the oven on for a while to bake the culture into oblivion for another month or so. We'd turn it off again when it began to smell like chicken & mold pot pie. For all I know the oven had become a primordial soup experiment, and some new life form was evolving.

When I moved out 6 months later the pie was still in there. For all I know it still is.

So, if you're a college student living in a run-down condo with a locked oven that smells like a chicken pot pie when turned on... I'm sorry.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Another exciting school year will be starting soon, and somehow I got sucked into becoming a band booster. This thrilling job involves me handling questions from other parents about band, upcoming band camp, musical instrument rentals, over-the-counter medications, do you know a good plumber, next week's weather forecast, and why are you calling me because the judge said it's my ex who has to pay for this stuff.

In a week of calls, this one was my favorite:

My iPhone rings.

Nurse Grumpy: "Hello, this is band booster Grumpy."

Mrs. Clueless: "I just found out my daughter, Marsha, has to bring her musical instrument to band camp?"

Monday, August 1, 2016

He drove himself to the first appointment with a friend's car, because his was in the shop. After the appointment he didn't remember that he had someone elses car, and walked all over the parking lot looking for his. He finally gave up, assumed his car had been stolen, and came back to my building for help.

He went to the cardiologist down the hall and told the receptionist his story. She called the police to report a stolen car. After interviewing Mr. Ford, the officer had him call a friend to come get him, but the one he called couldn't do so because Mr. Ford had his car, and couldn't make Mr. Ford understand that.

So the friend came in a cab to get my patient (who'd by now wandered back to my office). As they walked out to the friend's car, Mr. Ford said, "You know, I saw your car out there when I was looking for mine. I didn't know you had a doctor's appointment today, too.”

On Wednesday he called Mary to cancel an appointment for that day (which he didn’t have). He said he couldn’t come in because someone had stolen his car while he was at the doctor's 2 days ago. He later called in to see if he could get the appointment back, because the car had been “found” at a local repair shop (whose owner couldn’t figure out why it hadn’t been picked up for 5 days).

For the next 2 weeks we continued to get calls from Mr. Ford, asking if he could make an appointment now that he had his car back. He was politely reassured each time that he’d already been here.

I called and discussed things with his adult son, who took the car away while I notified the state about revoking his license. This only led to further (continuing to date) calls that someone has stolen his car. The local police aren't happy about this, either, and are now telling him to call me when he calls about the stolen car.

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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